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drive them from under barns and stacks. The Great Horned Owl and 
the Red-tailed Buzzard are successful rabbit hunters. As with the squir- 
rels, the larve of a large gad-fiy infest them, and in the summer fleas are 
abundant in theirfur. The Rabbit is very prolific, producing four to six 
young at a birth, and having three or four litters each year. The young 
are born clothed with hair and with the eyes open. In open ground the 
nest is of leaves aud grass, finished with fur from the pelage of the 
mether; the nest is usually in a hollow.scratched in the earth. The 
young leave the nest at an early age, and easily fall a prey when too small 
to escape by flight. In cultivated districts where the Hawks, Owls, 
Weasels, Minks, and other natural checks to their increase have beer 
destroyed, Rabbits increase in vast numbers. They sometimes girdle 
young trees, although no doubt much of the injury to trees charged to the 
Rabbits, is the werk of Field Mice. The Rabbit is easily trapped or 
snared; sometimes they are poisoned. As the flesh is good in winter, 
the most natural method of exterminating them is toencourage hunting 
them fer the market. They are worth on the Chicago market from five 
to fifteen cents apiece, according to the abundance or the state of the 
weather. I have seen them, when frozen in large boxes, sold by the 
cubic foot, ard shipped from Chicago to New York City. . 
As with the Northern Hare, Squirrels, and Deer, the Rabbit is subject 
to epidemics which sweep off numbers of them. Mr. J. A. Allen (Mono- 
graphs of North American Rodentia, pages 371-2) states that he has re- 
peatedly met with their dead bodies in the woods and thickets, and has 
noted the scarcity of the Rabbit during the years immediately following. 
The food ef the Rabbit is grass, tender shoots of shrubs, buds, twigs, 
and sometimes the bark ef trees. The main damage to orchards and 
nurseries is the severe pruning of the young trees. When the snow is 
deep, they reach the branches of fruit trees, and cut them as clean ag 
with a knife. In winter, according to Mr. Kennicott, they may be 
tracked to forest trees recently felled, where they resort to feed upon the 
buds. 
In disposition the Rabbit.is timid, net resisting when seized. It eludes 
its enemies by speed and stratagem, doubling on its track when pursued, 
taking to water which it dislikes, springing to a log and sitting motion- 
less, while the deg passes or is beating about for it. They often return 
to their forms when chased; sometimes they crowd up a hollow tree by 
bracing against the sides. It has an acute sense of sound, and often stops 
when running to listen to any unusual sound, as of a persen calling or 
whistling loudly. 
The Rabbit cannot run long, but for a short distance it can outstrip 
